


eurydice

by Kalael



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 21:18:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16502879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalael/pseuds/Kalael
Summary: The lucidity of his dreams still frightens him.  Overhead, the Beholding watches.In a wooden chair settled in the middle of a road, the thing who is not Helen Richardson also watches with impossibly bright eyes.





	eurydice

There is grit in his eyelashes, and for a moment Jon panics at the idea of the Sandman with its bag of decaying eyes. He brushes his fingers tentatively against his eyelids and although the tips come away wet, they smell of tears instead of blood. Distantly he recalls Martin’s voice stating the misfortunes of a Doctor Moss, and he drops his hands back to his sides.

The lucidity of his dreams still frightens him. Overhead, the Beholding watches.

In a wooden chair settled in the middle of a road, the thing who is not Helen Richardson also watches him with impossibly bright eyes. Jon sighs and scrubs at his face with his scarred hand, trying to wipe away the vision. Of course it doesn’t work, and he resigns himself once more to being held hostage in this unending sleep.

“You’ve shown no signs of waking,” the distortion tells him, “and your heart still isn’t beating.”

“You’re so very reassuring, thanks.” Jon snaps, more exhausted than he means for it to sound, and when the distortion just continues to stare he sighs louder and throws himself to the ground to sit. The asphalt feels real, but like he’s touching it through leather gloves instead of bare skin. The thought reminds him of Tim, and he wretches. Of course there is no bile to rise from his throat.

The thing who is not Helen Richardson continues to watch. The Beholding does not look away.

“How are you here?” Jon asks, knowing the answer already. It shrugs, the movement jerky and closer to human than the Michael visage had ever been.

“I don’t know. There’s still a lot of...settling, to be done. Your god is surprisingly amiable to my being here.”

“Well, you’re even more of an anomaly now. Likely wants to see how you play out.” He states it clinically, and Helen takes it for what it is. The Beholding remains silently oppressive.

“Suppose that’s fair.” It moves less than before, less dizzying, but the tilt of the head is still wrong. “You seem less angry.”

“Hard to be angry when you’re in between sleep and death, isn’t it? You’re the least of my worries.” Still one of the many worries, but much lower on the list than the ever present visions of the other fears.

Helen was a pretty woman. When her borrowed face smiles now, the twisting of it makes Jon’s teeth sore.

“Would you like it if I could help you?” It’s still Helen’s voice, only an echo of cacophony hanging there. The shadows curl beneath the distortion when Jon tries to find sense of it.

“I’m not sure you can, even if you had the vaguest notion of _how_.”

“Being the bend in reality isn’t any good if I can’t twist the mind between, as you said it, sleep and death.” The smoothness gives way to amusement gives way to sharpness. The Beholding presses down, demanding more. Jon opens his mouth to speak but the compulsion falls flat.

“Help me.” He says, low and trembling without the strength of power behind them. Helen stares unrelenting.

“You know the way out.”

Jon allows himself to believe that maybe this is what Hope feels like. Tentative and thin, stretched between his eyes and anchored in his stomach. The tension of it makes his head hurt.

“What do you want in exchange?” He croaks, knowing nothing is free and nothing can be trusted. Helen, who does not lie but is dishonest all the same, levels him with a steady gaze its human counterpart lacked.

“To talk. I like to talk. To you.”

“Helen did.”

“I think I did, too. Hard to say.” _Did Michael?_ Jon wants to ask, but his tongue is a weight and his eyes are aching. Hope pulls taut.

“Well, I suppose we could compromise on some statements.” Helen nods once and Jon shuts his eyes to keep them steady. They still feel gritty and wet.

A door creaks open in the side of a building that wasn’t there before, decaying brick matching the desolate road that the distortion is still seated in the middle of. Jon doesn’t open his eyes to look at it, the paint a pale gold in the sickly light of his dreamscape. The distortion shifts behind him and he Sees it, something like an expression curving through the broken shape of its head.

He does not turn around. Eyes still shut, he opens the door and steps through.


End file.
